China is creating its own state-funded Wikipedia and has 20,000 people writing it

Wikipedia launched back in 2001 and has amassed around 5,396,433 articles – with 800 new pieces being added every day. Despite the ability for anyone to edit the online encyclopedia, repressive governments around the world continually block their citizens from accessing it.

According to the South China Morning Post, the country has 20,000 people working on the third edition of its Chinese Encyclopaedia. When completed, it will have 300,000 entries that are 1,000 words long and are accessible online.

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"The Chinese Encyclopaedia is not a book, but a Great Wall of Culture," the publication reports Yang Muzhi, the editor-in-chief of the project, as saying. The project would "guide and lead the public and society", he continued.

The Chinese Encyclopaedia is being created by scholars from universities and research institutions around the country. Yang says the aim is to overtake Wikipedia and have the first version of the project online by 2018.

It's not clear at this point how much of an influence the Chinese government will have on the editorial content of the new publication, but the country has a long history of censoring online content. Most famously, the 'Great Firewall' of China is used to block content that isn't considered appropriate for the state.

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As well as censorship concerns, there will also be competition for the new publication. Chinese internet providers Baidu and Qihoo 360 provide their own versions of encyclopaedias. Despite access to Wikipedia being partly banned in mainland China, it is possible to access a limited edition of the website that's one-fifth the size of full Wikipedia.

Wikipedia's own page on the China Wikipedia says there are 939,000 articles overseen by the Wikimedia Foundation. Chinese Wikipedia also has around 2,369,000 registered users, although only 79 of these have administrative privileges. The full version of Wikipedia has 1,258 administrators and more than 30 million users.